The launch took place after two failed launch attempts: One on Monday and one Tuesday evening. Monday's launch was scrapped after a delay in communications with the rocket was detected on the launch pad. Tuesday's launch abortion happened due to low pressure in the combustion chamber.

The Space Exploration Technologies Corporation, or SpaceX, a startup company founded by PayPal co-founder Elon Musk, aims at lowering the cost of access to space. The $7 million price tag to launch the Falcon 1 is about ten percent lower than launches of rockets from other companies. SpaceX hopes that the relatively low price tag will make it the premier company in an already crowded launcher market.

Researchers should be able to easily fix the problem that forced the rocket to unexpectedly roll almost 200 miles above Earth, according to Musk. While the Falcon 1 did not complete all of its intended goals after launch, SpaceX execs are pleased with the progress the rocket has made so far. "The launch was not perfect, but certainly pretty good," he said.

The Falcon 1 is a two-stage booster rocket, powered by liquid oxygen and kerosene, that SpaceX has designed to carry payloads weighing up to 1,256 pounds into orbit.

"We did encounter, late in the second burn, a roll control anomaly," said SpaceX CEO Elon Musk.

Uh huh, yeah I read that - in fact my comment is MORE pertinent because of it. Stating oh gee and yeah guess what we give you a TEN PERCENT DISCOUNT compared to the competition is really stupid.

Space Travel isn't like hiring a rental car. If I get a 10% discount from company X and 4 out of 10 times my car breaks down on the side of the road because of the cheaper deal, I might have to walk, but I haven't lost all my luggage, or worse still my life. I dont think offering a 10 percent discount for the heightened promise of instant loss or death is anything to either brag about or promote until you've got a long history of successful flights.

First off, I'm pretty sure that 10% is a typo. SpaceX's stated goal is to reduce the cost to reach space by a factor of 10. They're not there yet, but they're pretty fairly near (I think it's 1/5 or so the price).

Also, SpaceX is NOT launching people into space, at least not yet. This was merely a satellite launch, and on a completely new vehicle. The fact that it even made it into space is remarcable (the Atlas vehicles, which did end up launching people into space, failed on their first 12 launches.

But still, the fact is that this was a test launch of a satellite . No people or assurances for success were involved, and that's the way it was expected to be; the point was to shake out the vehicle and test its systems.

I know no people were involved and I know it was a test. My first post doesn’t mention people and I only infer people in my second along with goods (i.e. satellites, experiments etc) in relation to the fact all these companies know (as the Russians have found) that having successful space vehicles used for whatever purposes can be nicely supplementarily funded through space tourism when you eventually get it right. So I suppose I’m foreseeing if they do get it right human travel would naturally follow. Granted they aren’t implying personal space travel at this point.

My gripe is the up front statement that going to space can be done so much cheaper and then having the aims of each test not being met. Yes they are making progress in successive tests and that is great. I guess I just mentally compare it to Branson and SpaceShipOne's approach (and yes at this point they are totally different aims) where they state things they plan to try and achieve and then achieve them, then state they will try and reduce the costs, and are quietly working to do it, with several notable achievements which are not being highly publicised at this point. I suppose I see this as being a more credible approach.

Or take Arianespace, which quietly blasts more than half the worlds satellites into space and few people have ever heard of them. I guess in a nutshell all I’m saying is if you want to make a big noise about how cheap you can do something, then prove you can actually do it first. Then the noise will be well credible.